Hubris takes down Hungary’s strongman, with benefits for freedom-lovers everywhere
Perhaps JD Vance could visit Belarus next. Or Slovakia. Or Serbia. Pro-democracy forces there would be thrilled. The US vice-president’s forthright but fact-free endorsement of Viktor Orbán (briefly: a hero being attacked by globalists) paved the way for the Hungarian prime minister’s defeat in Sunday’s parliamentary election.
This was not just a humiliation for Orbán and his cronies, whose patriotic bombast disguised greed, incompetence, thuggery and treason. It is also a stunning blow for their backers. Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping pretended to admire Orbán. But what they really liked was that he made Hungary into a springboard for attacking the European Union. The result, ending 16 years in power, means decision-making in Brussels will instantly become easier. More money for Ukraine. Greater unity in dealing with the Kremlin, with the Chinese Communist Party and with the Trump administration. Orbán’s defeat is also salutary for anyone in Poland, Slovakia or Czechia tempted by a similar anti-Brussels, Trump-loving stance. Aleksandar Vučić in Serbia (who faces a presidential election in late 2027) and Alyaksandr Lukashenko’s gang in Minsk (February 2029) will also draw conclusions.
The new government will have plenty to do in dismantling the vast commercial-administrative-media-judicial-political machine created since 2010. It will be interesting to see what the leading lights of this system do as their sinecures vanish. Lavish hospitality stoked foreign appetites for their pretentious faux-conservatism. It will diminish sharply now. Once the justice system is cleaned up, prosecutors will be asking some hard questions. It will be interesting to find out how much Hungarian taxpayers’ money was devoted to financing influence operations in other western countries, and who the beneficiaries were. Shadowy entities such as the International Investment Bank, a Soviet-era relic hosted in Budapest, will deserve investigation too.
Russia’s dirty tricks brigade, with their stunts and scare stories, failed again, just as they did in Moldova’s parliamentary elections in September 2025. The fulsome backing of the Trump administration, who saw Orbán as a like-minded rule-breaking illiberal, was either useless or outright counter-productive. Nor did the supposed economic benefits of Hungary’s special friendship with China sway the voters.
The result is also a blow for the euro-pessimists, who fear that technological change and economic dislocation means that ruthless populists are destined to dance on the grave of liberal democracy. For a start, Orbán did not rig the election. And he swiftly conceded defeat. Despite erosion of media and other freedoms in Hungary under his rule, he still obeyed the most important rules of the democratic game. The firebrand liberal activist whom I so admired in the late 1980s has changed a lot. But perhaps not completely.
The big lesson for pessimists is that campaigning is better than complaining. Orban won in previous elections chiefly because the opposition was disunited, discredited by its past performance, complacent and lazy. It preferred to fight the government through articles in sympathetic foreign media, rather than doing the hard work at home.
Orban has long exploited culture wars, anti-migrant sentiments and national paranoia. But these are not the only things that voters care about. His weakest point was his record. Hungary was becoming poorer. Public services were getting worse. Corruption was growing. The victorious opposition’s strongest point was not backing from Brussels (or Kyiv, or Davos), It was their eloquent, credible, hard-working leader, Péter Magyar and his hotshot team: watch out for the likely new foreign minister, Anita Orbán (no relation to Viktor).
Hungary shows that when mainstream democratic forces get their act together, they can win. That lesson should resonate across Europe. It might even strike home in the United States.
Photo credit: Ervin Lukacs on Unsplash